Carrot Jam

Oct 26, 2021 | 0 comments

How To Make Carrot Jam

Carrot Jam - ingredients on worktop

Grate the carrots, no need to peel if they are in decent condition. Put a small handful to one side.
Simmer the remaining carrots, with the lid on, in a little water until very soft.
Then standing over the pan, with the lid off, hard boil until the remaining water is mostly gone.
Tip in the sugar, the handful of carrots put aside and the zest and juice of a lemon. Retain the used carcass, as you can make a delicious lemon jam, using just used up carcasses, or a mixture of carcasses and whole lemons. Freeze the used lemon until you are ready to use it.
Simmer until most of the moisture has gone.
While this is happening, sterilise a jam jar and its lid by washing in hot soapy water, then gently warming the jar in the oven. whilst keeping the lid in boiled water. If you heat the lid in the oven, the seal will harden and may not make good contact with the jar rim.

This amount makes about ¾ of a normal sized jam jar. I used these amounts as that is what I had left (of carrots) in the meal plan.

To make a full jar see the recipe card for details.

What Is Carrot Jam Like?

Carrot jam is zesty from the lemon, with a little crunch from the carrot shreds. It tastes fresh and delicious. I’m really glad I tried this and will definitely be making it again.

Recipes for Carrot Jam and History (carrotmuseum.co.uk)

What Changes Can I Make?

Having created a carrot jam using leftovers from meal plan 2 , I was very curious if it would work with swede. Google showed no recipes at all for it, or any mention, looked up rutabaga too to see if there were any American recipes, but zilch.

Had to try it didn’t I! It tastes amazing and not in the least like swede. If I had to guess blind, I would have said carrot.

Can I make jam using onions?

an open kilner jar of onion jam.

I’ve got quite a few onions right now, so this morning, I’ve finally got round to it.

I used 300g of onions, the zest and juice of a lemon and 145g sugar.
Chopped the onion up small and simmered in 200ml water for 30 minutes with the lid on. Then removed the lid and turned the heat up to boil off most of the water.
Added the lemon zest and juice and boiled quite hard until most of the liquid was gone. It didn’t reach jam setting temperature, but it’s pretty thick so it doesn’t matter for 1 jar as it will get used before it has time to go mouldy. I stopped cooking it as it had turned a light golden colour.
The onion only softens, it doesn’t disintegrate into the water or anything like that, not even after being boiled for 20 minutes, so it definitely needs chopping very small.

So, the million dollar question, what is it like?

Surprisingly, the onion has retained texture, there is slight crispness there. The lemon flavour is present and the overall taste is very pleasant, mildly oniony, slightly zesty. Definitely worth doing again.

It could actually be used as both a jam on toast etc, or as a chutney with cheese or in sandwiches. So more versatile than I was thinking.

Great experiment!

Do have a go at this, or the carrot version, they’re amazing!

I’m going to try it with beetroot next.